Marczali Henrik és Szekfű Gyula vitája

The study is presenting and interpreting the images of two leading professional historians in Hungary on each other and their oeuvres: Henrik Marczali (b.1856, d. 1940) and Gyula Szekfű (b 1883, d. 1955). Cambridge historian G. P. Gooch assessed Marczali’s works in 1913 as follows: they “represent the highest achievement of Hungarian scholarship”. Marczali was one of the eminent professors expelled from Budapest University after 1919. Szekfű lived through a traumatic experience in 1914, however, after 1919 he had become a leading figure of historiography and an ideologue of the counter revolutionary regime. Marczali had defended him in 1914-15, but later on criticized his anti-liberal pamphlet in 1920–22. Szekfű commended his former tutor’s achievements, but at the same time distanced himself from Marczali’s liberal view of history. In 1943 Szekfű delivered a memorial speech at Marczali’s grave in the Budapest Jewish cemetery.